Presenting the User's Focus in Needs & Development (UFIND) method and its comparison to other design methods

Abstract

During the years of creating serious games in multidisciplinary areas, the authors of this paper experimented with multiple methods of game development with the goal of helping, educating people and eliminating the barriers arising from communication happening during software development. The method that proved to be the most successful is what the authors called the Users' Focus In Needs & Development (UFIND) method. UFIND is based on continuous feedback from the user, on usability and on gamification as it steps away from the classical software development methods. The aim of UFIND is that instead of the tasks, not only the application, but the user as well should always be in the center of focus while making the application. This also means that certain abilities, even the cognitive skills of the user can be developed further in each test cycle. In this paper, the authors would like to define and introduce the UFIND method of application development and compare it to other, traditional development methods. All five phases of the UFIND method are elaborated in this paper, thus giving a detailed look into this user-centered application development method and presenting why it is useful for developing serious games.